Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Politics: Rude Ghouliani's Torture Fetish

It's not that often that we here at Casa de Los Gatos find ourselves agreeing with Richard Cohen, who writes for the WaPoo. In fact, it's rare indeed. However, today's column on Rude Ghouliani and his cavalier dismissal of torture, and what it means for America's image abroad and at home to have all the Republican candidates howling for More! Torture! Now! as they are doing - well, it hit home.

Sez Cohen:

The realization that life is not a movie has inexplicably yet to occur to Rudy Giuliani, despite the horrors of Sept. 11. Mistaking something he must have seen in the movies for real life, he mocked the alleged softies who condemn torture of any kind, saying of sleep deprivation, "They talk about sleep deprivation. I mean, on that theory, I'm getting tortured running for president of the United States. That's plain silly."

Oh, really, you schmuck? Obviously, Rudi never did any childcare for any of his sprogs. We would really like to talk to the mother of his children.

We who have been deprived of sleep, in a relatively minor, casual way when caretaking sick relatives, or working multiple 60-100-hour weeks, know what mild sleep deprivation feels like. But we cannot begin to comprehend what round-the-clock sleep deprivation feels like. The kind we practice on detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and who knows what other hellholes in which we're secretly holding people.

So here's my offer for you, Ghouliani, and you, Romney, and anyone else who continues to trivialize torture. Please volunteer to be sequestered at Guantanamo for one week and sign a disclaimer giving permission to your jailers to mete out to you exactly the same treatment that they visit upon other detainees. It won't be as bad as our other victims have suffered, because you know it will end after a fixed period - unlike the human wrecks we've held there for years. Just do it, you cowards. Put your money where your mouth is. Seven days. Sleep deprivation and waterboarding, and whatever else, stress positions, isolation, sensory deprivation, random noise. Then come back and report to us whether you still believe it's not torture.

We would pay good money to see that, except we're not as inhumane as you. We believe it is torture to subject any creature to such treatment and we pity anyone who has suffered such, because we know they will never truly be whole again.

You rotten scumbags. Twenty partings of the hair with the Golden Bat o'Clue for each and every one of you. And Judge Mukasey? You go first.